Friday, April 12, 2013

It looks like House Speaker John Boehner may be paving the way for two of his biggest caves - on gun control and on immigration. If he does, it will mean that he will essentially be throwing in with the Democrats at the expense of a majority of his own caucus. It will be a colossal betrayal. We're talking Benedict Arnold type betrayal.

It would also make him a bald-faced busted... liar.

The 'Hastert Rule', named after Boehner's Republican predecessor Dennis Hastert, says that no bill will get a vote unless it has the support of a majority of the caucus. The Toomey-Manchin gun control legislation would not garner a majority of the caucus, which should make it DOA because Boehner has supported the Hastert Rule, though only when it seems to suit him, which doesn't seem to apply with the Toomey-Manchin bill.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) signaled Thursday that he may continue to bypass a House Republican rule that has required any legislation being voted upon to have the support of a majority of the GOP conference.

Boehner has flouted the so-called “Hastert Rule” — named for former GOP House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) — on a few pieces of key legislation so far this year, which hasn’t sat well with some conservatives.

He said at a news conference Thursday that he will continue to try and follow it in spirit, but also suggested he might well violate it for upcoming votes on guns, immigration and the budget.

Boehner in early March sought to reassure his conference that the rule would continue to be regular practice, but he broke it again earlier this week.

A common theme - demonstrated by Toomey - is that Republicans are incapable of presenting a united front on important matters. There always seems to be just the right number of votes from their caucus to give the Democrats what they want. In this case, if Boehner breaks the Hastert Rule on gun control, it will mean he knows the legislation will pass with a Democratic minority, coupled with a few Republican peel-aways. It will make Boehner a traitor to his party but more important, a traitor to the Constitution in general and its second amendment in particular.

On another huge issue to conservatives, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) more than just slightly rankled the right wing of his party when he became one of the 'gang of eight' and joined with the likes of Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), John McCain (R-AZ), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on immigration reform (amnesty). The left will display photos of Rubio standing with them at a podium for years to come.

What Rubio didn't seem to understand or care about was that nothing - absolutely nothing - good could come out of his joining with those Senators.

Now, Boehner is hinting that he will betray conservatives on another promise. That promise is that he would honor regular order, which in the case of the monstrosity that is the immigration bill, is all that more important. Like the 2009 stimulus bill and the 2010 Obamacare bill, page numbers end with four digits.

According to a recent Politico report, Boehner is seriously considering abandoning regular order to rush through immigration reform. Regular orders is the process by which a bill is supposed to come up through the respective committees of jurisdiction and allow members of those committees to offer amendments, an open and transparent process that then is supposed to continue on the House floor.

“The GOP is also mulling skipping the committee process and instead having lengthy discussions among Republicans to work out the legislation’s kinks,” Politico’s Jake Sherman wrote in the report. “This would allow leading conservatives who are crafting the deal with Democrats to explain the policy. That seems to be the preferred path, according to conversations with several GOP aides.”

Ain't that something. With that as a potential reality, it would mean that Boehner only feigned outrage when he slammed down the 1100 page Stimulus bill in 2009 because, for one thing, it was being rammed through without consideration for... wait for it... regular order:

Ah, the tale of two Boehners. First, the tough-talking Boehner can adequately express outrage when he has no power. Since becoming Speaker, he's rarely expressed even a modicum of that kind of indignation. Now that Boehner is in the majority and holding the gavel, he's just might be willing to do with a 1500 page immigration bill what he was so adamantly against being done with an 1100 page stimulus bill.

This would make him a liar in addition to being a weak leader. Apparently, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) agrees.

Democratic politicians should be recognized for one thing; they hardly ever break ranks. United fronts abound. Perhaps one of the best examples is the Senate vote on Bill Clinton's impeachment. Not one Democrat voted to remove him from office. It worked for them then and it's a strategy they've replicated many times over since.

Republicans, on the other hand, are behaving as if they want to lose the 2014 mid-terms because - as a group - they're incapable of standing on principle and are walking all over themselves to hand the Democrats victory after victory.